Surprising reason we never use our phones during dreams
Topics: Phones, Psychology, Sleep, Technology, Science
Liv Bridge
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Oscar Wong
Topics: Phones, Psychology, Sleep, Technology, Science
Our phones rarely make an appearance when we're in dreamland for one surprising reason.
Although we might not remember, it is believed we dream every time we fall asleep as our minds are free to run wild during the REM cycle.
Although this is a regular human behavior, interestingly, men and women are said to dream very differently.
According to Dreams, women are more likely to dream about people they know or interact with regularly with the dream taking place in a familiar setting, like home or work.
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Meanwhile, men's are more likely to be set outdoors and feature some unfamiliar faces.
Another study by the University of West of England in Bristol further found women tend to have more nightmares than men.
However, one thing that apparently transcends the apparent gender binary of dreamland is the fact that few of us ever see our phones while asleep.
Studies show only 2.7 percent of men and 3.5 percent of women dream of their devices, which is interesting considering how much they permeate our waking lives.
What's even more interesting is how other modern technologies don't seem to have this affect, with transport like cars, boats, buses and planes, as well as elevators, all regularly cropping up - and the emergence of technicolor TV meant people stopped dreaming in black and white.
Dream researcher and psychologist Dr Kelly Bulkeley posed the that the 'newest technologies are not necessarily the most important ones in the world of dreams'.
Writing in Psychology Today, the doc said: "It seems that technologies of transportation have had more of an impact on people’s dreams than have technologies of communications and entertainment.
"Add in trucks and buses to cars, and the predominance of the internal combustion engine in dreaming becomes even greater."
As to why this might be, Dr Bulkeley said he wasn't 'sure' but wondered if it meant 'technologies of transportation have more of a visceral impact on people’s lives'.
"Telephones, movies, videos, and computers can be fascinating and absorbing, but they do not directly affect a person’s body with the kind of sensory intensity that people feel during a car ride."
He continued: "Whatever the explanation, the results of this brief study indicate that the most frequently appearing type of modern technology in dreams is one that was invented more than one hundred years ago.
"Newer technologies like computers and videos have not (yet) made as big an impression on the dreaming imagination."
Alice Robb, author of Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey, also offered her theory of the 'threat simulation hypothesis'.
″[This] basically suggests that the reason why we dream is that dreams allow us to work through our anxieties and our fears in a more low-risk environment, so we’re able to practice for stressful events," she told The Cut.
"People tend not to dream quite as much about reading and writing, which are more recent developments in human history, and more about survival-related things, like fighting, even if that has nothing to do with who you are in real life.”
Dr Bulkeley further adds it might not be so far-fetched to see Virtual Reality (VR) similarly influence our dreams with a 'rise in VR-related dreams' though, at least for now, it remains 'a far off possibility'.
"Until then, cars remain for most people the dream technology of choice."